Sierra Leonean Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of full or partial Sierra Leonean ancestry. This includes Sierra Leone Creoles whose ancestors were African American Black Loyalists freed after fighting on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War. Some African Americans trace their roots to indigenous enslaved Sierra Leoneans exported to the United States between the 18th and early 19th century. In particular, the Gullah people of partial Sierra Leonean ancestry, fled their owners and settled in parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and the Sea Islands, where they still retain their cultural heritage. The first wave of Sierra Leoneans to the United States, after the slavery period, was after the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s. According to the American Community Survey, there are 34,161 Sierra Leonean immigrants living in the United States. History Slavery The first people from present Sierra Leone who emigrated to the United States were slaves imported in this country between the 18th and 19th centuries. The first slaves from Sierra Leone arrived to the United States are some of the Gullah ancestries, or (in Georgia) Geechee, which were sent from Africa or since the Caribbean, particularly Barbados, to serve as free labor for the cultivation of rice, whose area of cultivation was the southeast coast of the modern United States. Indeed, many slavers employed slaves from the West African coasts because their great ability to work in the rice plantations. The Sierra Leonean slaves belonged to peoples such as the Mendes, Temnes, Vai, Loko, Fula, Sherbro and Limba people and many of them were Muslims (as is the case of the Fulbes). Slaves from Sierra Leone made up 24% of the slaves arriving imported to these place. Most of the slaves of Sierra Leone were imported to southeast, mainly to South Carolina (where arrived the 70% of those slaves. The slavers of modern-day Sierra Leona arrived in South Carolina were more of 18,300 people, settling in places as the Saint Helena Island) and Georgia (where arrived the 15% them. They were more of 3,900 slaves from this region, becoming in the most of the slaves of the colony), followed, over long distances, mainly by Virginia, Maryland and Florida (those places had in total more of 11% on total of slaves from Sierra Leone in the present U.S., having between 900 and 1,000 of those slaves depending on